Council cuts

Council cuts

Dear Mr. Cameron-
Councils are cutting their costs by cutting front line services. This is unnecessary as most councils are middle and upper management heavy. How is it possible for a chief executive to be paid 21/2 times more than the prime minister? Nobody is 'worth' that much.
The unfortunate situation is that these very same people are the ones who decide the fate of those lower down the ladder. Thus, those that actually DO the work are finding their employment terminated, whilst those further up are busy justifying their existence.
Local government cannot be trusted to put its own house in order, and it is a task for central government to address.
I have hard the arguement put forward that in order to attract the 'best' people a high salary must be paid. This is disingenuous, as , if a significantly lower pay rate was applied to senior posts, whilst so called 'high flyers' might not be attracted, others who would do the job perfectly adequately, would be.
Let's getaway from the 'city' pay scale structures and start being realistic about what senoir posts should pay.
Perhaps if those 'managers' stuck in their office eyries spent a month on the front line be it bin man or street cleaner, they may get an impression of what it is to work and hence their value.

Re: Council cuts

Re: Council cuts

Peter,
You are so right.
In our local council, my friend was told to take the last 6 weeks of last year off as sick because he hadn't taken any time off during the year. My friend didn't want to, and didn't, despite being told that he would be sent to Coventry by his so called 'stick together unionised workmates' and his manager told him "that was the way it works these days."
He was told by his shop steward to keep his mouth shut because rocking the boat leads to awkward questions that would cost people their jobs.

My daughter worked for a company that tendered for the contract for the IT requirements for the borough next to the one that we live in. The subject of PC and printer renewal was raised in a meeting and she asked one of the council members how many users they were talking about. The guy said the council didn't have a clue as to how many users it had, didn't know if the known users had a PC, or laptop, or a printer, and suspected that a lot of staff had taken them home for personal use only and requisitioned another one for work.

Re: Council cuts

Re: Council cuts

Local councils are top heavy. Far too many are on extremely high salaries for doing very little. A lot more money could be saved by getting rid of top and middle management rather than those employees who actually provide the front line services. Although most of these come from outside contracted companies. I find it hard to imagine that using a third party for Council services actually saves money in the long run.

Money is wasted through continuous refurbishment of offices, replacement of IT equipment which most of them don't know how to use properly anyway. Like MPs who go off on these jollies abroad where during the course of a week they attend a couple of meetings and spend the rest of their time eating, drinking and goodness knows what else! Haven't they heard of video conferencing. There is no need to incur these excessive travel and accomodation costs on supposed fact finding missions.

Then there are the Council's who employ staff who live hundreds of miles away and pay either their travelling costs or hotel costs. One council in the South West of the Country was paying for flights to and from Scotland for an employee, who interesting enough was previously employed in Essex. How much actual work was he doing? If he wanted to work in England he should re-locate like the rest of us would have to do or pay for his own travel.

If you try and contact your local Council, many will not even transfer calls to individual departments. You have to register your enquiry and if you are very very lucky, someone might ring you back. The trouble is When you pay people a lot of money they soon believe that they are actually worth it.

Quite frankly it amazes me that any work is actually done in Council offices during the week and Friday afternoon is an absolute no no.

Re: Council cuts

Our council employed a man to work in the local Parks Dept.
He had size 13 feet, but the boots in the stores only went up to size 12.
He wasn't allowed to start work every day because he wasn't wearing the correct safety
footwear, so he had to stay in the canteen all day, every day.
He did this for over a year, and the only reason it stopped was because he eventually found a better paid job.
I know this happened because at that time he lived next door to me.